PORT ST. LUCIE – Willie Randolph watched the Super Bowl from his living room, saw Tom Coughlin put the finishing touches on his trek from firing line to genius.

It was another symbol to a man born in Brooklyn, steeled in the Bronx and elevated in Queens that reputations can flip in a New York minute. Yet Randolph does not want to deal in Coughlin comparisons. Not because he is blind, Randolph insists. He certainly sees that the ax is poised for him should his team not distance itself from last year’s historic collapse, should these 2008 Mets not honor Fred Wilpon’s request for late-October relevance.

“I’m not afraid of that,” Randolph said. “I grew up here. I know what time it is.”

Yet to embrace the possibility of emulating Coughlin, Randolph reasons, he would have to accept that his reputation should be determined by this snippet in time. And he disputes that this season is a defining moment for him. In Randolph’s view, “I’m a winner and I have always been a winner.”

That may be true. But it is not the way the game is played now. Not with 24-hour news cycles, not with the relentlessness of sports talk radio and the Internet, not with the back page of this paper ready to scream something on a daily basis. Is it fair?

Randolph railed against a sports culture in which “Coughlin can go from being thrown to the dogs to a $21 million contract. I’m hoping people took note to be careful about making definitive statements. Don’t look to the narrow view.”

However, Randolph had no problems with such instant analysis/ gratification when the Mets’ first division title in 18 years in 2006 motivated (strong-armed) the Mets to more than triple his contract from $1.8 million to $5.65 million over three years. And now the magnifying glass is on this season. Because of the way the last one ended, historically and pathetically. And because the Mets obtained Johan Santana.

That trade changed the stakes for Randolph and the Mets, flipped them from a team that could win to a team that must win. The Mets made the kind of deal that Dallas did for Jason Kidd, that Phoenix did for Shaquille O’Neal. An all-in deal. A deal in which the future is mortgaged and the payroll is elevated. A deal in which you get a parade or – fairly or unfairly – your season is underwhelming. This is the world the Yankees and Red Sox play in annually, joined this year by the Mets and Tigers (because of their deal for Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis). It elevates everything, from attention to anticipation to stress.

“I laugh when I hear someone say we have more pressure with Santana here,” Randolph said. “I think we have less pressure because we have a better team.”

You could see that team in some ways yesterday, with Santana precisely locating fastball and changeup in four shutout innings against Boston, and Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado getting on the field for the first time this spring. You watch the Mets and you see a level of elite talent good enough to front an NL pennant. But you also see a house of cards. You see the potential problems with age, injury and depth. And you still see too many traces of that devil from last season, the complacency that made a team vulnerable in the end to the Phillies’ late charge.

The roster is still replete with too many low-motor players, too many bad bodies, too little sense of urgency. This falls under Randolph’s purview, having the respect to jolt a club that did not respond enough to him in 2007. “I’m not talking about what happened (to his players),” Randolph said. “I talk where we are going.”

It was not long ago that the general opinion was that Coughlin could never reach his players, that he did not know the buttons, did not have the temperament. Then it changed in that New York minute, a super transformation.

Randolph shunned the comparison, stating his career is more than 2008, more than whether he can win with Santana and this payroll. But no matter how you look at it, this season is going to be a huge part of Randolph’s biography. Will he emerge a giant?